Portrait of a Married Couple

Pieter Codde made his name with small pictures of fashionable young people at parties, usually set in plain, grey rooms. In 1634 he used that same stage for a portrait. A young husband and wife stand full length, close together and hand in hand, most likely only just married. They wear their best, with fashionable collars and costly jewels, and Codde painted the finery down to the wedding ring on the woman's index finger. Above the door he added the date and his joined initials, 16 PC 34.

By 1882 the panel belonged to the Counts van Aldenburg Bentinck. In 1944 it left the family and was sold through a Hague art dealer for the museum Hitler planned in Linz. After the war the Dutch state took it into its care as part of the Netherlands Art Property Collection. It went to the Mauritshuis on loan in 1948 and was transferred there in 1960.